For a while after salvaging got formally added to the game, these Dread Gurista wrecks always gave the unbroken salvage parts you use for building Tech II rigs. (Sadly, since a patch many months ago, I have not gotten any salvage of any kind from these wrecks.)

I don’t know whether the long dearth of Tech II salvage was a bug, now fixed after Trinity, or whether I simply had a long run of bad luck. But today I happened upon a Dread Gurista Invader wreck in the roid belts (Thanks, Oregrinder, for not looting or salvaging it) and it had a mix of Tech II and Tech I salvage, including a Micro Circuit.

(My encounter with Oregrinder was fun. After I looted the Dread Gurista wreck, he took offense and started shooting at me with his mining cruiser. So I warp scrambled him and began shooting back. He managed to flee, the hard way, after a long stern chase. Eventually he outran my “helpless hauler” far enough to warp away, but he was well into armor. He never came back for the ore he’d been jettisoning, so of course I had to salvage it.)

Every so often, as all inhabitants of the belts know, the usual belt rat spawn is replaced by a slightly better class of rat. In Caldari space, that means the usual Gurista pirates are replaced by “Dread Gurista” equivalents. It’s quite rare.

The nice thing is, these Dread Guristas drop better loot. They always drop at least one brick of Gurista or Dread Gurista Ammo, usually a copper tag of the appropriate type, and sometimes (rare drop on a rare spawn) a Dread Gurista railgun (equivalent to Navy Issue in most if not all respects). There’s also usually a named module of some sort.

For awhile after salvaging got formally added to the game, these Dread Gurista wrecks always gave the unbroken salvage parts you use for building Tech II rigs. (Sadly, since a patch many months ago, I have not gotten any salvage of any kind from these wrecks.)

All of the above makes a salvager like me careful to watch for Dread Gurista wrecks in the belts. A lot of the miners kill bet rats on autopilot, and don’t know or don’t care that there is sometimes worthwhile loot in the wrecks. That’s great, more for me.

Tonight, however, I saw something odd and inexplicable. There was a Dread Gurista wreck in one of my local belts, and it was white. Instead of the usual yellow/green (don’t ask me, I’m color vision impaired) color of a wreck somebody else killed, it was the white that usually means “wreck from a ship I killed.” Only, I didn’t.

So, I checked the ownership of the wreck. It didn’t have any.

Does anybody know how a belt rat gets wrecked in space without anybody owning the wreck? I’d love to know.

It turns out that it requires precisely five and two/thirds salvos of cruise missiles from my stealth bomber to kaboomski a Hulk.

And therein lies a tale. You want to hear it?

Tough shit, I’m telling it anyway.

The day began with a typical recon sweep of the local belts, to see what flotsam and jetsam might have washed in from the vasty depths of space o’er night. Got all the way to the last belt before spotting anything interesting.

What I spotted was something I have not seen in months: an unescorted Hulk, mining merrily into a whole constellation of jet cans. (Usually these days they are mining into a little-buddy hauler, or warping home with each load, or mining somewhere harder to find, like inside a mission space.)

Now, this Hulk looked fairly crunchy; he was flying a full rack of Vespa IIs to deter entrepreneurs more casual than myself. I’ve tasted those drones and I don’t like the flavor much. But they don’t really threaten a tanked hauler, not in the time it takes to scoop a load. And besides, Hulk pilots with itchy trigger fingers are hard to find. So, the fifty-thousand ISK question: does this Guido carry a warp scrambler?

Uncloak, lock, ship scan. Why, no! No, he does not. Of course, now he knows he’s under scrutiny.

Time to dock and swap ships. No point in taking the Crane, tiny cargo hold that it has; might as well take one of the trusty old cheap Badger IIs.

Come out of warp, bump the Hulk, open the first handy can. Jackpot! It’s full (full!) of Plagioclase. So I shove as much as I can into my Badger, look at the rest, jettison my load, and scoop the rest into my jet can and my cargo hold.

Negative response from the Hulk. Set warp for the hangar. Cogitate.

Combat pilots in EVE like to talk about the game of rock/scissors/paper. I know that every encounter in this game has that character, but I feel it acutely in situations like this. Should I keep hauling ore, while he finds a friend or a tackler who could stop me? Or should I recon his reaction, and respond only once I know how he’s going to react?

He’s in a corp, so friends are likely. But, he’s acting a little bit like a victim, so maybe he’s foolish enough to remove ore from an Ironfleet can? I decide it’s time for a stealth bomber flyby at extreme range. If he’s still there, alone, in the Hulk, I can always bring the haulers back into the game. And if he’s gone for backup, I can react to that, or guard the Ironfleet can. Plus, there’s always a chance he’ll be flashing red when I come out of warp, and then I could drive him away.

While warping back, I decide to check local for any intel it may provide. It sounds like he finally noticed me, anyway:

Sadly, there’s no time to chat with my fan club, because just about then my stealth bomber comes rumbling out of warp. Target: 1 Hulk, 50 clicks off the bow. Flashing red.

Well I be damned, he must have flipped the Ironfleet can. “Cruise missiles away!”

I wonder how many salvos I can hit him with before he warps?

Rumble and thump, rumble and thump. Is this turkey never going to leave?

Rumble and thump, rumble and thump.

As I said up top, he went “Kaboom!” after the first two missiles in salvo number six. If he attempted to warp, I couldn’t tell. Maybe he was AFK, maybe he was humping a roid, I dunno. I do know he stopped long enough to pull in his flight of Vespa IIs. Maybe that was his undoing? He should have had plenty of time, but no:

Now, the trouble with the stealth bomber is, she’s a wallowing pig (sorry dear, I love you anyway) who will never close all that range in time to get the salvage. I’ve got to warp home and come back with a salvage vessel.

Only the Jovians know what eldritch horror of a revenge ship this Hulk pilot keeps handy, so the salvage run is potential suicide. But who cares? The Tinfoil Salvager is fleet, effective, and she’s a freakin’ Kestral, with Tech 1 mods. A good salvager should never be flying more ship than he needs for the job at hand.

Back I went in the Tinfoil Salvager. Coming out of warp, there he is! He’s flying something that’s flashing red at me, but there’s the wreck. Get busy, close on the wreck, look at him. Condor? He’s in a Condor? His revenge ship is a CONDOR?

No matter, I’m still screwed if he’s tackle fitted, this salvage frigate has four salvagers high and I’m fresh out of half-full Quafe bottles to throw out the pee-bottle ejection port at him. Time to open the wreck, and start stuffing loot in my hold. Meanwhile, he’s locked me up and shooting, and my shield is starting to melt. Cargo hold is full, there’s still salvage but oh well, warp!

Made it out without a scratch on the armor, both Modulated Strip Miner IIs safe aboard. Home, dump, back.

Ah, good, he went away. Grab the rest of the loot, start salvaging the wreck. Nice, a pristine Lorentz Fluid, I do love Tech II wrecks. Whoa boys, here he is flashing red! What’s he flying this time?

Iteron V. Guess he decided it was the ore that matters.

Waitaminit, there’s still a lot of ore here. My day’s work is far from over!

Home again, ship swap again. This time I think the Crane’s the thing — big enough to haul some ore if that’s all I find there, shooty enough to eat an Iteron V if he’s foolish enough to still be there. Which, of course, he won’t be.

Only, he was.

“Scramblers on, boys, and crank up that missile launcher! And Navigator? Don’t forget to follow him, we don’t want him steaming out of scrambler range at an embarrassing 119 meters per second!”

Sure enough, there he goes, trying to outrun my blockade runner. As I drop into his wake and start pounding him open one missile at a time, I hear a funny noise. Sort of a “fweet! fweet!” sound.

Can it be? Can this day possibly get any better? Has this optimist really fitted a popgun on his Iteron V?

Why yes! He has! It’s a hauler duel — my favorite thing ever.

Only, he’s outclassed. I’ve got him outgunned and out-tanked by factors of 10 to 1 or better, so it’s over soon. I never even got to turn on my shield booster:

And that, boys and girls, was the last I saw of of Cyriakus. Then followed the boring part of a successful salvage op — consolidating all the ore into a couple of Ironfleet cans, waiting for agro to expire, bringing out the B.F. Bustard, and hauling the fruits of the op home to the hangar.

The final haul: roughly a fifth of a million units of Plagioclase ore, a pair of Modulated Strip Miner IIs, a pair of Vespa IIs, a handful of mining crystals, and a small assortment of Tech I mods for the fitting hangar. Not a bad morning’s work, if I say so myself.

Big Mar tole me about our new friends from ACME, said he stopped by to wave at a mining op tonight and clean up some broken wrecks that was layin about. Left a fat juicy can of ore because he was flyin his fancy salvage frig that he dont want to lose.

Made me smile. Since I got the interdictor, I havnt had time to do much salvage. Got my cheap old fleet of salvage destroyers just gatherin space dust and gettin lonely. So I pulled one out — The good ship “Iron Stick” I think it was, grabbed a bookmark from Mar, and went to have a looksee.

Sure enough, came out of warp next to a fat can. Was right in the middle of a big fat cloud of drones, mix of mining and combat, was a barge and a cruiser and I think a frigate all right on top of me.

Of course Big Mar has paved the way, reputation-wise that is, cause they was all locking me up before I even had time to hitch up my pants or say howdie.

Got down to busness, jetted me a can, put it on the tractor, locked up as many drones as I could, salvaged the drifting ore, and began haulin’ wood out of that clusterfrick.

Overview turned to flashy red, my shields startedto get a smidge melty, and I blazed away for a bit at the drones. Not much joy, not with the ammo I was packin and no webber on board. How about that cruiser? Is he tanked decent, or is this one of them mining cruisers with a thin crunchy outer shell and a tasty cream-filled middle?

“Plinkety plinkety plinkety plinkety plink!”

(That’s the sound of small arty rounds bouncing off the cruiser.)

No joy, time ta go. Cant winnem all, and there’s still a buncha ore in an Ironfleet can, heck we might even keep it if they don’t flip it back right quick, I’ve seen Mar do crazy things with his haulers sometimes.

Then I start to think: How many points of scramble do they got on me? I didnt see any scramble messages, but I wuz busy. Can I warp?

I can warp. Yay!

Docked safe, honked at Big Mar, he sez he’ll go have a look. But, by the time he got there, they stripped our can (or maybe blew it, they dint have long) and went home, nobody and nuthin left but some cans-o-rat-loot. Which he snagged, the way he is about leaving loot behind — so, not a total waste of ammo, just almost.

Today I met my first AC-ME lecturer. Seems Alexandria Phoenix is one of those folks who doesn’t approve of anybody who has a different gaming style than she does, and so she lectures those of us who play differently about our failure to play the game her way. As she puts it (see below) we “need to have things explained and be told how to act.” She must really love pirates!

The people I call “lecturers” are sort of a sub-species of smack talker. They generally don’t resort to profanity or threats, and they limit their insults to the topic at hand — namely, by putting a pejorative name to whatever I’ve done (usually salvaging ore that I did not mine myself) that they disapprove of. They cannot stand to have their pejorative name disputed, and they will argue endlessly in an effort to get me to accept their pejorative language as accurate. Usually (and this time was no exception) they’ll digress into various suggestions about how I should play the game differently — mining my own ore, following “the rules” as they see them, going to more insecure space, whatever.

This particular lecture is worth repeating because, about halfway through, Alexandria bizarrely begins to criticize me for my lack of courtesy, while continuing to insult my gaming preferences in a most discourteous manner:

To set the scene: I’ve warped to zero on a jettisoned cargo can floating near a mining barge that had a few comba drones out. Turns out the can has just a few more veldspar nuggets in it than can fit in my hauler:

[There’s actually a reason, important to the plot, why I’m flying in a hauler that only has about 5.5k cubic meters of haulage space, but I don’t think Alexandria Phoenix ever realized what that reason was.]

21:52:26 Alexandria Pheonix > how much did u get exactly?
21:53:09 Marlenus > Who counts? A shipload here, a shipload there, it adds up over time.
21:53:49 Alexandria Pheonix > oh well u set me back 20 minutes, its almost like a miner malfunction…
21:54:07 Alexandria Pheonix > /emote shrugs
21:54:30 Marlenus > Not sure how I set anybody back — are you talking to me?
21:54:40 Alexandria Pheonix > yes
21:55:08 Marlenus > Oh, you mean I set back the “how much ore can I throw overboard?” project.
21:55:09 Alexandria Pheonix > u set me back 20 minutes worth of ore…not bad but it’s easily made up, why don’t u get ur own miner or a few miners to mine for u instead of stealing
21:55:24 Marlenus > I don’t steal, I salvage
21:55:40 Alexandria Pheonix > it’s not salvaging if its in a container marked with my name
21:55:49 Alexandria Pheonix > which if you would have looked it is
21:55:49 Marlenus > Why would I mine, when space is full of dangerous free-floating cans that need to be cleaned up?
21:56:14 Marlenus > I say it’s salvaging, you’re welcome to disagree but you won’t get me to change my terminology
21:56:41 Alexandria Pheonix > well at least ur cargo’s small on that ship
21:56:54 Marlenus > Sad but true
21:57:14 Alexandria Pheonix > oh well that means u can’t steal everything from those of us who actually work for a living
21:57:27 Marlenus > Salvage
21:57:44 Alexandria Pheonix > …we already agreed to disagree so i’ll use my term u use urs
21:58:08 Marlenus > Hmm, I missed the bit where we agreed on anything, sorry
21:59:31 Alexandria Pheonix > …don’t say you’re sorry if your not
21:59:44 Alexandria Pheonix > and why would u ‘salavge someone else’s stuff anyway
21:59:53 Alexandria Pheonix > it was afterall someone elses
22:00:03 Marlenus > Deal, if you won’t say I agreed to something I didn’t. Say, you seem to have a fairly stern tone, today.
22:00:19 Alexandria Pheonix > i just don’t like thieves
22:00:26 Marlenus > Ironfleet takes the position that stuff floating loose in space is not owned
22:00:34 Marlenus > So, we don’t see it as taking someone else’s stuff.
22:01:07 Alexandria Pheonix > well u have some messed up ideas, cause my can’s still here and it still belongs to me
22:01:17 Marlenus > And me, I don’t like folks who try to tell other folks how to spend their leisure hours, so I guess we’re about even
22:01:49 Alexandria Pheonix > well if you’ve no courtesy to someone trying to work for a living then you need to have things explained and be told how to act
22:01:56 Alexandria Pheonix > as does a child who acts wrong
22:02:04 Marlenus > Dude, have you forgotten that we are both playing a computer game?
22:02:13 Marlenus > I’m not working, and I’m sorry to hear that you think you are!
22:02:22 Alexandria Pheonix > i’m a girl first off
22:02:31 Marlenus > That was the “declarative” dude, not the gender prescriptive dude.
22:02:43 Marlenus > And it’s funny to hear you speak of courtesy, when you have begun and continued this conversation with … very … little of it.
22:02:44 Alexandria Pheonix > and in this game to earn money you work for it by doing legal tasks
22:03:59 Alexandria Pheonix > i have no courtesy for those who share none with someone who’d spend their time taking a role that is legal to game standards
22:04:03 Alexandria Pheonix > including not stealing
22:04:37 Marlenus > Tis fine that you have no courtesy, but isn’t it a bit odd to complain of missing courtesy in others when you’re deficient your own self?
22:05:09 Alexandria Pheonix > no i’m prefectly courtious to many other players especially those who play by a legal role in the game
22:05:32 Marlenus > LOL, but you asked ME for courtesy while showing me none, that’s raw hypocrisy I’d say.
22:06:01 Alexandria Pheonix > no i’m saying you should show it not asking, just saying you should to those of us who actually try to play by legal game rules
22:06:21 Marlenus > “You dirty thief, you should be more polite to others!”

Sadly, at that moment a snow cloud blew in front of my satellite dish and I lost my connection. So Alexandria got the last word.

Had an exploration success today, tracked down a Radar signature in .7 space that actually had stuff in it. Unfortunately I don’t know enough about invention to know how useful the stuff I got was. It’s got some modest market value, anyway:

Sadly, my gaming time was short this summer, and then recently I got sucked into playing a fair bit of Team Fortress 2. (Look for the Cheese Factory server, it’s run by a friend of mine.) So I haven’t had any good salvage exploits to report.

Tonight, however, I attempted a tricky bit of ore salvage, and got away with the goods, but only by dint of careful preparation. For, you see, I took on a well-defended corporate mining op. Only my extreme caution let me escape alive. I do so hate to lose ships!

These days when I feel like doing a salvage sweep of the belts, I tend to go out in my trusty covert ops frigate. That way, if I find a likely bit of salvage floating loose in a can, I can bookmark the can, then drop right in on it in whatever ship seems best for the conditions and the goods to be salvaged.

Tonight, I found a busy mining op being conducted by the Advanced Combat Machines And Equipment corporation (AC-ME). It was a juicy looking setup (and I choose that word advisedly), featuring two Retriever mining barges, two cruisers with mining lasers burning, and a diverse cloud of mining and combat drones. Ore cans were out and named with well-aged timestamps, no haulers were present, and there was a full buffet with open bar. (Well, no, actually I made that last bit up.)

However.

I’ve had bad luck with multi-vessel mining ops, even fairly undergunned ones like this one. Given time, even a swarm of gnats can lock a fellow down and do him a meanness. So, no combat, no expensive ships, just one quick in-and-out with a well-tanked, well-stabbed, disposable Badger II. Don’t get greedy, don’t get stupid, just haul some ore and move on.

Queue the undocking of the good ship “Iron Extricator”, band playing, crowd cheering, and dockside hookers crying sweetly into their hankies. Without further ado, I drop in on a canful of rich plagioclase.

Actually, it proves not to be full, but it holds more ore than my cheap Badger can carry, so that’s fine. Grab the ore, hit the warp button. It’s about time, too, because somebody I hadn’t seen before is flashing red and locking me.

Geez, I’d forgotten what a pig-dog a Badger II is when it needs to turn. What’s the flashy ship? A Hound?

“Computer, what in the heck is a Hound?”

No answer — not, that is, unless you count the sound of a salvo of cruise missiles hitting me. Fortunately, a skilled and careful mechanic can install a metric shitload of shield extenders on a Badger II.

It turns out, for those of you as didn’t already know this, a Hound is the Minmatar stealth bomber. Also known as potential pwnage on a stick.

Fortunately, I hit warp speed and was gone before a second salvo could land. Mission accomplished without so much as a scratch on the armor.

But seriously, guys: a full-time stealth bomber flying mining overwatch? It’s a great tactic, but nobody actually does it, because nobody can find a bomber pilot patient enough. I am impressed! Sadly, I forgot to note the name of the patient and loyal pilot as I was warping out (in a big hurry).

A very good show by AC-ME, my hat’s off to you all. You came closer to getting me than anybody has in quite a long while.

===

Update: Of course I had to get greedy.

The time: about an hour and a half later. I log in, jump in the covert ops frigate, and zip out to have a look at the op. It’s down to one (visible) ship now, with several ore cans visible.

Alt tab out, look at the log for the prior encounter. Who was flying that stealth bomber? Looks like Chebri. Is Chebri in system? No.

I’ve posted before about cruisers who have tried to punish my favorite salvage transport, to their woe and detriment. However, they’ve usually been Caldari mining cruisers (Osprey), so once I get through their shields, it’s a pretty quick “game over, man.”

Well, my good Crane (with rigs and fancy gear) was parked quite a ways away, so this morning I took out the spare and started fitting it up. Nothing fancy yet, just T1 stuff I had laying around in the hangar, but more than enough to fend off mining barges and hostile bantams who take offense at my attempts to clean up all the jettisoned ore that’s cluttering up the local belts.

First flight out I find a guy, a young player, mining into a jetcan in an Amarr cruiser (Augoror). The hazard to navigation went into my cargo hold, and then I started cleaning up some wrecks that were in the vicinity. Suddenly he’s flashing red to me, and my shield is being tickled with a single light laser beam of some sort.

Oh really? Okay, I’ll play. So I unlimbered the heavy missile launcher and the warp disruptor and went for coffee.

His shields went away quite rapidly, but the armor was another story. My missile would hit, his armor would dent, there would be a pause, his armor repper would hit, we’re back to (close to) where we started. Am I gaining? And is he cap stable with that repper?

He’s in a newbie corp, so there’s no worry about corpmates coming to his rescue. We have all day, and it looks like we are going to need it. I’m thinking, he’s new, he won’t drop any loot, I’ve made my point (don’t shoot at Ironfleet), I could let him go. I think I can get through this armor, but it’s going to take for-freakin-ever, and I’m worried he’ll get an extra rep cycle when I reload the missiles that will put me back to square one.

Then he made his fatal mistake: he smacked.

Gnoam Cahlan: so now what? we just going to sit here forever? Unscramble me you ass

It was the “ass” that killed him. So that’s how it’s gonna be? OK, I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got forever.

Marlenus: Slow and steady wins the race

About six missiles later, it was clear that I was finally gaining. Armor was well below half, and his repper wasn’t firing often enough to bring it back to half.

Last missile in the launcher nicked his structure. Reloading, reloading, reloading — geez, is this crew in a union or something? What a bunch of slugs! Finally, I had missiles back. Alas, he has armor back too.

Three missles later, I’m in structure. Two more, and he’s history. Another victory for the rusty and dented Ironfleet salvage transports!

Sorry about the lack of updates, my EVE playing has been minimal and mostly consisting of flying support ships for mission-running friends in other corps. Fun, but nothing to report.

Today, however, I cleaned up a little bit of ore I found drifting in space, and got a bit of the usual smacky-smack in local:

MacGyver Miner > you gonna give my shit back marlanus?
Marlenus > If I’ve got it, query how it could possibly be yours?
Abbott4 > yeah wtf marlenus
Abbott4 > stop stealing stuff
Marlenus > Salvage, if you please
Abbott4 > 10k in ore you owe me
Abbott4 > ORe thife
Marlenus > LOL, you jettisoned it into space…
Abbott4 > you stole it
Marlenus > I salvaged it from where I found it drifting aimlessly through the spaceways, a hazard to navigation and a threat to spacecraft everywhere

Nice blog post over at The Art Of The Gank about Ironfleet’s salvage adventures, even if they are a little shaky on the distinction between salvage and theft:

I hesitate to call this a proper “gank” as it’s really ore can thievery that tumbled into a weird sort of gank thanks to the not-so-brilliant reactions of the miners involved. But it’s still a good read, and a great lesson – for you miners out there – on aggression flagging, timers, and generally what not to do when an ore thief shows up.

Meet Ironfleet Towing & Salvage, an EVE player corp that has taken to blogging about their particular playstyle and experiences. It’s well worth a read and a subscription (and hat tip to them on WordPress theme choice – I liked it so much I decided to play with it here!). Their playstyle seems largely limited to ore can thieving in Empire space, something I generally abhor, but hey, it takes all kinds to keep EVE an interesting place to play. And they write a good blog with a touch of humor, so they can’t be ALL bad.